A Brief Report Prepared for the University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center Amanda M. Pollitt, Brandon A. Robinson, and Debra Umberson Introduction Marriage is a key institutional context for the study of gender and gender inequality. One way in which gender inequality is maintained in marriage is through gender norms, which […]

A Brief Prepared for the University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center Debra Umberson, Mieke Beth Thomeer, Corinne Reczek, Rachel Donnelly, and Rhiannon A. Kroeger Introduction An important benefit of marriage may be the care provided by spouses during episodes of physical illness and is one reason that married people enjoy better health […]

Is there more going on in the hookup scene than meets (men’s) eyes? The college hookup scene is typically understood as a male-dominated environment—where men are mainly in charge of sexual initiation, parties are often centered around fraternity houses, treating women as sex objects is common, and women engage in sexual displays, including kissing each other, in order to arouse male interest.

Yet, in the forthcoming April 2014 issue of Gender & Society, a team of researchers observes that for some women the super-straight environment of college hookups is also a setting “to explore and to later verify bisexual, lesbian, or queer sexual identities.” Turns out public kissing and threesomes play an important role—and that not all of that sex play is about performing for men’s pleasure.

CCF’s Dawn Braithwaite was on KFOR’s Lincoln Live radio show discussing children in families with same-sex parents. Listen to the interview on their website (after clicking, scroll down and select “Children in Gay Families”).

Betty Friedan highlighted the many ways that cultural images and expectations of gender in the 1950s and 60s held women back. The expectations derived most obviously from patriarchy, which Friedan recognized, but also from white supremacy, capitalism, and heterosexism, which she did not. In Friedan’s time the feminine mystique certainly constrained women’s senses of themselves and their possibilities, but at least it recognized women as a group. The “lesbian mystique,” by contrast, denied lesbians even existed. The concept was literally inconceivable. In the 19th century, Queen Victoria is rumored to have flatly proclaimed: “Women don’t do that.”

At a time of dramatic change in attitudes towards gays and lesbians in America, a new study released this month in Gender & Society highlights the diversity of gay and lesbian experiences in America. “Midwest or Lesbian? Gender, Rurality, and Sexuality,” by University of Nebraska sociologist Emily Kazyak, puts the lives of rural gays and […]

By Brian Powell, Ph.D. James H. Rudy Professor of Sociology Indiana University Phone: 812-855-7624 (office); 812-360-0474 (cell) Email: powell@indiana.edu The gender revolution may have been stalled, but the sexual revolution continues to gather steam. Twenty years ago, the idea of same-sex marriage was inconceivable for most heterosexual and homosexual Americans. Sixteen years ago, the Defense […]

The New Jersey Supreme Court has given the state Legislature a historic opportunity, and I don’t mean the chance to allow same-sex couples to marry. The Legislature has the chance to enact civil unions for all couples – same-sex and different-sex. New Zealand does it. So does the Netherlands, under the name “registered partnership.” Maine and the District of Columbia recognize “domestic partnerships” for both straight and gay couples, although both give domestic partners fewer rights than those accorded married couples. Even New Jersey’s current domestic partnership law allows different-sex couples to register – but only if both partners are over 62, presumably a nod to the impact of remarriage on certain pension and retirement benefits.

Executive Director of the Rockway Institute for LGBT Psychology and Public Policy, and Distinguished Professor in the Clinical Psychology PhD Program, California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco